


Halls Of Mirrors

by Britpacker



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: M/M, Slash, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-09
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-15 23:48:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liz and Hoshi speculate.  A pair of aliens accumulate.  Trip and Malcolm? They're just having fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine, except the mistakes. No spoilers; this one could take place at any time during the mission.

“You’ve got to admit, we’ve got the deluxe suite.” Elizabeth Cutler ran a hand along the curved balustrade rail down the sweeping wide staircase that led from their overnight accommodation to the planet’s surface. “And it’s sweatier than Satan’s jockstrap up there! If you quit worrying about the fifty million metric tones of rock over our heads, it’s the best hotel this side of the Great Belt.”

“Yes, but I can’t, so spare me the psychology.” Perched on the end of the circular Starfleet-cabin-sized bed in the centre of their rock-hewn cavern, Hoshi Sato tried to soften her curt reply with a shrug. “We’re _buried_ , Liz. Yes, it’s got a bath the size of Sickbay and a velvet comforter on the bed, but it still feels like a tomb to me.”

“I’ve never been in one yet, so I don’t know.” Unconcerned by her friend’s morbidity Liz dug into her kitbag and shook the creases from her long baby-pink silk and lace nightgown, draping it like a veil over her head. “And since it’s got better plumbing than Enterprise and more luxuries than King Tut’s tomb, I’m going to enjoy it. You want the bathroom first?”

“I’m okay. And at least he was dead before they buried him.”

A lace-edged vanity bag struck her hunched shoulder. “I give up!” Cutler announced as she stomped toward the rugged bowl of a bathroom, swiping a treat from the assortment of jewel-like fruits on one of the many laden tables around the walls. “If it’s freaking you out that badly, go boil your head on the surface. At least I’ll get some sleep!”

Left alone the linguist flopped back among a nest of fluffy pillows on a huff, scanning her surroundings through half-closed eyes. The Nutari hadn’t skimped on luxuries, from the velvet-upholstered couches to the highly polished tables groaning under the weight of wine jugs, fruits and flowers, and the endless drapes of fabric that muffled the dead, cold sound of voices bouncing off bare rock. But they were still buried in a cold stone bowl with only a hundred tiny lanterns hung from rough outcrops around the walls to provide a shadowy, mysterious light. If she could only see the sky...

She would, Hoshi admitted to herself while dragging her own nightdress out of their shared pack, still be hating it. And in her room mate’s position, she’d be either tearing out her own hair or committing murder.

Tentative, she tried one of the ruby berries tumbling out of the nearest crystal bowl, savouring the sweet spurt of juice across her tongue. Carefully disentangling her neat ponytail she set about undressing while blocking her ears to the tuneless singing that floated in from the bathroom. If nothing else, she’d admit one thing: Nutari knew how to look after unexpected visitors.

Her bare feet sank deeply into the fluffy rugs that swathed the whole floor as she began a methodical exploration of the main room. The luscious fabrics draping the walls felt delicious against her outstretched fingers but what really caught her attention was the huge tapestry on the rear wall; two shapely female nudes frolicking in a woodland pool, sly, knowing smiles on their lips as their gazes – steel blue and ebony – held and their fingers flicked pearl droplets of water against each others’ buxom breasts. Although she’d always considered herself straight, Hoshi felt a pulse of erotic understanding in her deepest core. It had been a long, long time since anyone had looked lasciviously at her.

With a shake of the head that made her long hair feather against her damp face she turned her attention to the furnishings, all dark wood and rich upholstery, which surrounded the main bed space. With plump, deep-cushioned love seats and a graceful chaise longue even Captain Archer could stretch out on without his feet hanging off the edge spaced around the perimeter, all interspersed with extravagantly inlaid tables, closets and desks, the Nutari dungeons were magnificently appointed: and the bathing facilities, if the squeals of glee emerging from the ante-room were anything to go by, matched up pretty well, too. It was cool enough to feel comfortable without a trace of the dank, underground moss-and-stagnant-water smell she had expected: almost the perfect overnight stop. 

“You think a skylight would’ve been too much to ask?”

Liz, it seemed, had gotten distracted by something. “Ouf! That _tickles!_ Hoshi, this thing has the best water jets I’ve ever – ooh, stop it, that feels _wicked!_ – seen!”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” The other woman’s hedonistic wail overlaid her words and the deep throb she had experienced admiring the décor returned in full force. “Dammit!”

Now not only was she het up, she was horny. Scattering her favourite Klingon obscenities at machine-gun speed, the pretty linguist threw herself face first onto the gigantic bed, determined to smother her inopportune urges – or failing that, she thought bitterly, herself.

“You know who’s next door, right?” The lace hem of her gown sticking to still-damp legs as she walked, Liz re-emerged into the main room with a slackened grin and a faint flush on her face. Hoshi shrugged.

“Part of the away team?” she suggested sweetly. The other woman snickered.

“Commander Tucker and Lieutenant Reed,” she announced in a conspiratorial whisper, her boneless flop onto the elaborate bed sending ripples through the soft mattress into her friend. “What do you bet they’re not moaning about the standard of the accommodation right now?”

Her guffaw started deep in the slender Japanese woman’s stomach. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re _moaning_ ,” she gurgled. Liz’s answering smirk was way too smug. “C’mon, spill! What’ve you heard?”

“Jen saw them kissing in the palace courtyard.”

“No way!”

“That’s what I said.” Tucking her legs beneath her like a child at morning assembly, Cutler wagged her head until her soft brown hair flew. “Remember the high chamberlain giving us the official spiel? While the rest of us were admiring the fuck-fountain – okay, the _Torrent of Fertility_ if you’re going to get snitty about it - the commander sort of eased Lieutenant Reed up behind the giant woman with two heads and kissed him right on the mouth.”

“And Malcolm didn’t rip his head off?” Hoshi mirrored her friend’s position, dark eyes dancing as their gazes locked. Cutler snickered.

“Hey maybe love’s melting that iron rod up his ass!”

“I’ve always thought that’s a big act – that tough-guy unemotional thing he does.” Hoshi nibbled her full lower lip and frowned at her friend. “C’mon, what do you bet me there’s passion _plus_ under that stern exterior? You’ve always got to watch the quiet ones! I’ll bet he’s hot stuff when they’re alone.”

The more she considered their discreetly affectionate friend, the more Liz seemed to come around. “Maybe. I’m pretty sure he’s got a sensual streak wider than the Kol’tari Rift. Did you see him checking out the drapes in the Throne Room?”

The ensign cocked her head, her lips pursing. “What did I miss?”

Liz laughed self-consciously. “Nothing special, I guess. It was just... there was something in the way he closed his eyes and ran his hands down the folds: as if he was seeing through his fingertips. I just thought as I was watching, I bet he touches Trip the same way. You just _know_ he’s the slow and sensuous type; the kind of man who likes to take his time and really _map_ his lover.”

“Stop it right there.” To her own ears the protest sounded unconvincing, and the look she got confirmed it. Throwing up her hands, Hoshi succumbed happily to common curiosity. “Oh, wouldn’t you have loved to be in Jen’s boots?” she wailed helplessly. "All these months I’ve been watching them - briefings, surprise parties, movie nights – and nothing! Jen comes on an away mission for the first time ever and scoops the pool. Life’s just not fair.”

“She said it was hot enough to melt the marble, and it only lasted a second.” Liz tore a handful of berries from their stalk overhanging the nearest fruit bowl, suddenly desperate to refresh her drying mouth. “Maybe I’m talking out of turn, you being a senior officer and all, but – dammit, Hoshi! Those two gorgeous guys getting it on… If only they weren’t so damn _professional!_ Just a little grope in the back row at movie night, that’s all I ask. My imagination could do the rest.”

“Oh, I’m right with you.” Muzzy romanticism ran smack into cold, hard frustration, the collision making Hoshi feel faintly seasick. “I expected Trip to be…”

“Mushy?” Cutler suggested. Her friend’s delicate features scrunched.

“Romantic,” she corrected, the prim fold of her hands belied by the wicked grin that tugged her mouth. “The kind of man who’d want to hold hands in the hallway…”

“Who’d sigh and light up whenever his lover came into the room,” Liz continued. 

“Who wouldn’t just glance up from his PADD and say _“mornin’ Lieutenant”_ when the man he’s been holding all night sits down at his table for breakfast.” 

“Holding all night…” Liz was drifting again, rocking gently, staring without seeing through her companion. “Oh, my!” 

“Holding, kissing, touching…” Tendrils of heat were swirling through her stomach. Hoshi let her eyes drift shut, the familiar faces of her two close friends forming hazy in her mind. “Oh, God! What wouldn’t you give to be a fly on the wall tonight?”

Unnoticed by the women in their flustered state, something glinted at the corner of the tapestry over their bed. And in a hollow cave deep within the bedrock, a small power-blue humanoid turned from a bank of screens to beam at his companion.

“The males are mated!” he chirruped. 

“The females wish to observe!”

“Quite natural!”

The bigger Nutari thumbed an inoffensive dial barely jutting from the smoothed rock that formed his desk. Sighing in unison, both reclined in their seats watching intently every monitor bar one around the walls blacking out. Slowly, the screens flickered back into life, each one displaying a seamless section of the same room. Forked tongues flickered over drawn-back lips. Echoing strangely in the confined space, Liz Cutler’s breathy reply overlaid their synchronised sighs. 

“Oh, yeah! Goodnight, Hoshi.”


	2. Chapter 2

Silence swathed the bedchamber like a drape of the heaviest brocade. While her companion perched on the bed’s edge, vigorously combing her damp hair, Hoshi Sato snuggled deep into crisp cotton sheets and closed her eyes, vainly conjuring the insomniac’s oldest friend, a flock of cartoon sheep to help disperse the taunting images of smirking Englishmen and sappy Southern blonds that filled her head. Her ears felt stuffed with cotton wool, her limbs leaden as tiredness hit her in a great crashing wave. “Been a long day,” she mumbled.

The mattress sighed beneath the other body’s small movements. “Sure has. Move ov – oh my _God!_ ”

The covers were wrenched off her cocoon. Irritably, Hoshi lurched up, trying to snatch them back. 

And her gaze connected in a sheet of plate glass with the guileless blue one of a near-naked Charles Tucker III. 

Squealing, she seized a pillow as the best form of protection on offer since Liz had commandeered the rest of the bedding, which the petite American was clutching to her throat. And still the Chief Engineer, hands flattened on the transparent partition, stared right through them. 

“Trip Tucker, what in hell are you doing?” the Japanese squeaked, comradeship and compassion forgotten in a desperate bid to preserve some modesty. A quick twist dragged the blankets free of her neighbour’s frozen fingers, their softness kissing her chin as it dipped to hold them decisively in place. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to spy on the girls’ dorm?”

“Erm, he’s not _that_ much of an exhibitionist, right?” Cutler murmured, unable to keep her eyes from drifting south to the single scrap of Starfleet-issue attire concealing assets much speculated on in Enterprise’s female changing rooms from their most relentless admirer. Tentative, she lifted a hand and waved.

Not so much as a Floridian eyeball flickered. She tried again, with both hands.

“Coo-ee!”

Liz jumped. “What the _hell?_ ”

“I’ve heard Malcolm do it.” With an unapologetic shrug Hoshi divested herself of her protection and clambered onto her knees, her tongue taking a slow circuit of parched lips as she surveyed the handsome blond in all his oblivious glory. “What do you think? A one-way mirror?”

“There’s one way to find out.” Scissoring her way to her feet, Liz sauntered to take station directly before the engineer. Turning toward Hoshi, she winked and calmly, deliberately, flicked up the back of her gown.

“Elizabeth Cutler!” Colour flooded the linguist’s cheek, but the complexion of the man in the glass never changed. With a shrug Liz smoothed down her skirt and plopped onto the bed’s edge.

“Looks like we’ve got us a fairy godmother, Hoshi,” she announced with a smack of the lips. “You think if I wish for popcorn some’ll appear? We could sell tickets for a show like this.”

“If you really think…”

The outraged retort died on Hoshi’s tongue as another voice, warm, slightly husky and unmistakably masculine, permeated the shiny barrier between them. “You’re not _still_ fascinated by that bloody tapestry, are you?”

For the first time Tucker moved, glancing back over his shoulder with a cocky smile. “Tellin’ me you don’t like it?” he challenged.

From the shadow cast across an arched opening – bathroom, Hoshi decided – Malcolm Reed emerged like a giant milky butterfly from the chrysalis’s depths. She couldn’t breath.

What she could do – a fact she discovered only when the room tilted alarmingly around her – was move, shuffling to get a better view of the dark-haired lieutenant in all his naked splendour. “No wonder Trip looks so happy in the mornings,” she heard herself sigh.

“Hell, yeah!” Liz exhaled. 

Reed unleashed a deadly chuckle. “Oh, I’m not saying that.” 

Offering a silent prayer of thanks for her excellent eyesight Hoshi leaned perilously off the edge of the bed, enraptured by the smooth play of sinewy muscle beneath her friend’s flawless pale skin. When he disappeared behind the greater bulk of his partner she swayed, straining to keep him in sight. “I think it’s quite – erotic.”

A pair of slim hands worked around Tucker’s body, the thumbs coming to rest tucked beneath his waistband. Reed nuzzled the side of his partner’s neck and the women watched, breathless, as his tongue slid out to trace a glistening pattern up the length of the jugular. “Stimulating,” he mumbled, gliding the flat of one hand across Trip’s flat belly. 

When he took a sharp nip of that corded neck Hoshi felt its sting pass into her deepest core. “Inspirational,” the Englishman purred, swiping away at the abused spot with that wicked tongue-tip. His right hand dove fully into his lover’s shorts, cupping the weight visibly stirring there. His head tilted sideways Trip turned on his heel, both arms coming up to lightly encircle his playful mate.

“I got all the inspiration I need right here,” he growled in the last instant before claiming Reed’s upturned lips with his own. Muffled as it was, both women clearly heard the satisfaction in the smaller man’s moan.

“Jee-sus!” Magnetised by the movements of the lovers Hoshi began to touch herself, one hand on the bed for support while the other roved, the crispness of her short shift flowing like iced water between two pieces of prickling hot flesh. Trip’s boxers bulged, his erection and his lover’s hand connecting in the moment before Malcolm could shove the unwelcome barrier down, drifting like a falling leaf to his lover’s feet.

“Oh, darlin’.” Tucker’s eyes fluttered shut and it was all Hoshi could do to keep her own open, fixed on the thick staffs jammed between the two men’s bellies. Only the faint giddy feeling of slow movement alerted her to the fact she was sliding backward, landing with her head against the backboard and her legs comfortably apart, her buttocks pressing deep into the soft mattress. Both men were moving, rocking gently, their hands wandering while their lips locked, every movement filled with the lazy confidence of established lovers. Whatever fantasies she’d had, they’d never come close to this.

Those fractured images of frenzied passion had brought her to a whimpering climax more than once, but now… lava bubbled through her core, liquid warmth melting every muscle. Thoughtless, she dipped a hand lower, pressing the heel through her thin gown. Sensation shot up into her belly. She sighed.

“Oh, God.” 

To her left, somebody squeaked. Engrossed in the scene playing out before her, Hoshi heard nothing. 

Carefully she eased her way up onto the pillows, knees slightly bent, one hand rested comfortably in the cradle of her thighs. Her nipples were tightening, the erect buds pressing pleasantly against fine cotton, demanding her attention. Absently she brought up her unoccupied hand to fondle them, sending sparks of pleasure through her swollen breasts.

“That’s nice, love.” Malcolm’s voice, low and throaty, seeped into her dreamworld, its usual clipped precision softened with the faintest hint of a passion-slur. His head lolled back into Trip’s cupped hand, a lazy, loving smile parting his bruised lips. Her fingers slipping in the dampness between the folds Hoshi probed deeper, small spurts of pleasure spreading out beneath her touch. Her lower belly felt tender; her breasts sensitised, as if the voice sliding over her skin had the silk-sweet touch of double cream. All she registered was the tone: the sensual promise in the Englishman’s sigh before it was captured in another deep, drugging kiss.

“Malcolm… oh, baby’.” Trip’s rumble reverberated as a delicious counterpoint and she forced up her drooping eyelids, the heat inside spreading as if the languorous caresses the lovers bestowed were landing on her own tingling skin. “Let me come inside you tonight. I wanna feel you around me.”

Biting her lip held back the moan Hoshi could feel working up through her throat, but at the same time sent pinpricks of sensation south to meet those rolling north from her core. The two waves met right as Malcolm’s breathy “Yes please!” kissed her ear.

And shot right down between her legs, which parted a little wider when the pad of her index finger contacted her clitoris for the first time. Hoshi jerked. Electrified. Pleasure rippled. Briefly her surroundings greyed out.

Leisurely, Malcolm turned from his mate, his splayed hands rested on the glass. Hoshi swallowed hard, rapt as he gripped his penis firmly at the base, his breath washing condensation’s fine mist over the mirror. If she’d been capable of rational thought, the sight might have worried her.

Instead, almost as far gone as her British friend, she inched her thighs further apart, wrenched the shift’s neckline aside and wrapped her left hand fully around an achingly receptive breast. Everything was slowing down. Every point of awareness seemed brighter; sharper. Deep between her thighs, heat rose and bubbled, saturating her questing fingers. She was floating.

Something scraped sharply against the side of her foot, puncturing the blissful bubble. Dazed dark eyes slithered sideways. “Sorry,” Cutler gasped, the second short syllable shooting up two octaves as her nipple, exposed by her unlaced and gaping bodice, received a pleasant, stinging pinch. “I’m just….”

Silently, Hoshi eased the hand off her swollen globe and held it toward her neighbour. Like a baby in reach of its mother’s trailing hair Liz grabbed it, her fleshy palm slipping damply until their fingers could lace in an anchoring grip. For a moment the two women smiled slackly at each other. Then a masculine groan flooded the subterranean chamber and two heads whipped to the front.

A strong arm snaked around Malcolm’s waist, steadying the Englishman when he rocked backward, his head hanging down and his mouth wide open as he gulped for air. Long, confident fingers worked across his toned stomach. Even before a tousled blond head popped out behind his right hip Hoshi knew in her deepest parts exactly what her friend was experiencing. Her empty passage throbbed hard. Her fingers twitched.

Sensation skittered out. This time, she didn’t even try to mute her moan.

Neither did Malcolm, pressing back wantonly onto the broad fingers that probed his tight channel. Faint murmurs lapped at Hoshi’s ears, the treacly Southern drawl as soothingly familiar as a warp engine’s hum, the words indistinct but their erotic meaning clear. Ghosting his hand up his partner's flank Tucker heaved himself upright, his touch a subtle guidance to the smaller man. “Come to bed, babe.”

Liz whimpered; their bed rolled with the motion of two undulating bodies. Sound and sensation alike oozed through her sensitised skin like water through porous rock. Hoshi rubbed herself harder, captivated by the torpid, sensuous aura surrounding her friends as they drifted, locked in a dreamy clinch. When they broke the kiss in favour of gently nipping and licking around each other’s mouths it almost finished her.

Trip sank backward onto the bed, knees raised and smile inviting. Even Hoshi’s trained ears, always alert, couldn’t detect a murmur while Malcolm clambered to straddle his boyfriend. Her fingers slipped through the slickness coating her folds, finding the pulse that throbbed there and pressing hard. Reflexively, the hand clasped with Cutler’s tightened.

Through pleasure’s swirling haze the myriad of stimuli assaulting her senses merged into a harmonious whole, amplified by the liquid warmth flowing from her centre. Without consciously registering it she saw the tight sensual frown on Malcolm’s face dissolve at the pressure of Trip’s phallus’s sliding into his ass; heard the Southerner’s deep growl of satisfaction as his lover’s heat enveloped him; felt the scratch of Liz’s toe against the her ankle; and smelled the sweet musk of feminine sex rising around their bed. 

Instinctively she matched the rhythm of Tucker’s upward strokes, meeting the downward pressure of Reed and Liz alike, the bedsprings’ squeal a background descant to the pants and moans of four humans on the edge of sexual release. Her vision blurred around the image of the tangled lovers, their bodies glistening, perspiration’s droplets trickling enticing as water in the desert down Malcolm’s chest as he dragged Trip’s hand to wrap around his rock-hard shaft. In time with the movement of their bodies the linked hands began to slide, the empurpled cockhead with its sheen of natural lube peeking like a naughty child with every stroke. At last – _at last_ , something deep in her frazzled brain screamed – their pace picked up. 

No longer lazy or teasing the two men ground together, their grunts stretched out into guttural groans above the slap of flesh on overheated flesh. Hoshi circled her swollen clit, pushing herself upward into her relentless touch, squirming, desperate to join her friends when the tide of release swept through them. Her shoulders arched from the pillows, the pressure of Liz’s hand around hers almost painful, a focus-point amid the glorious feelings that bloomed into every extremity. She was on fire. Aware of everything, yet conscious of nothing beyond the vortex pulling her deeper, dragging her in.

Close to her left ear a drawn-out moan erupted to swirl with the sounds permeating from the next room and the bed jerked wildly under the weight of Liz’s climax. Hoshi bit hard into her bottom lip, fighting off the surge of sensation, clinging onto the edge while her hand was bruised and her hips jerked up, the pressure unbearable, her half-lidded eyes still focussed on the writhing figures opposite. Malcolm’s head fell back. His mouth opened wide in a howl of primal joy.

And the last thread holding Hoshi Sato to reality snapped.

Molten heat surged from the heart of her pleasure and the back of her throat stung with the expulsion of a cry she didn’t hear. Her body arched, fire coursing through her veins, melting her to a panting, whimpering puddle of bliss, her fingers still working convulsively against over-stimulated flesh. Her head spun. Her racing heartbeat sounded loud in her ears. 

The universe drifted around her. She didn’t care.

“Love you.” Malcolm Reed’s sex-slurred words wormed into her trance with the accompanying whimper of Liz Cutler, still making the mattress rock with her leisurely post-orgasmic undulations. Hoshi sighed, nuzzling deeper into the bedding. She felt warm. Tranquil.

“Love you more.” Trip Tucker’s pledge ended on a sigh, and she could picture them, sweaty and sated as she felt, shifting together, snuggling and petting. Malcolm emitted a low laugh.

“Not possible,” he murmured, and when she cracked open an eye Hoshi could just make out his arm stretching out to tug a bedspread around the two men, cocooning their tangled lengths against the cold. “Comfy?”

“Oh, yeah.” They were, she knew, on the verge of sleep. So was she.

There was just one thing missing; one final pleasure her friends enjoyed to the full, their sated bodies plastered together, sharing the heat, melting one into the other while the cover shifted against them, sticking where it touched wet skin. The bed moved abruptly. Hoshi mewed.

And when she forced herself to look around Liz was stooping over her, the covers lifted and dazed look on her face. “Would you mind…” she started, giving a helpless wave of the hand by way of explanation. 

Her heart lurched, but Hoshi Sato didn’t hesitate. “I’d like that,” she whispered, crawling between deliciously cool sheets. Liz hopped in behind her, curving herself around the slighter woman’s back. 

The weight of an arm across her body. The solid pressure of a splayed palm on her stomach. The serene security of being warm, replete and held. They were the last impressions the linguist remembered before her slide into oblivion was complete.

*

In the rough-hewn ante-chamber cut beneath the more imposing guest suites a dozen small screens separated out from the single giant monitor wrapped around the two Observers of Nutari. “The males are mated!” the smaller, his pale blue skin darkened to indigo, gasped while dabbing vainly at the inky fluid which stained his lap. His bigger companion, slumped in his seat with eyes half-closed and one seven-fingered hand still hanging limply at his crotch, stirred.

“The High Committee will find our records most informative!” he mumbled. “Generations of Nutari will study them!”

“The females….”

Disinterested, the larger alien swiped a button on his console and between the two sets of slumbering humans a barrier of solid, shiny black rock coalesced from a billion molecules of glass. “Perhaps, in the future,” he sighed, swivelling his seat until he could stare straight at the monitor displaying Cutler and Sato’s rumpled bed. “The craving exists; they do not identify it. Perhaps our assistance this night…”

The smaller observer genuflected hurriedly. “The Goddess grant blessings to those that observe!” he whispered, sweeping a bright black glance around the bank of screens before returning to consider the two men cocooned in a fleecy bundle. “And gratitude to the progenitors, that this sacred task descends from them to us! Honourable father, your consent to transmit our data?”

“The barrier is restored; do so.” Closing his heavy eyes the senior Observer turned away from his eager apprentice, satisfied the boy would do the work of both. Within seconds his slight snores joined the sighs and contented grunts of the alien visitors under their care.

The young watcher waited until a stentorian snort interrupted the gentle rhythm before discreetly keying a sequence into his stony console and settling back with hands down and legs comfortably splayed. Others would find academic value in the couplings tomorrow. His superior would disapprove.

But it would be many months before the Masters of Nutari made public the discoveries made about this most exotic species. Carefully he narrowed the camera focus to the two males entwined in their passionate embrace, puckering up his mouth against the gasp that tickled his elongated throat. There would be ample time to study the females’ experience before his tutor roused up; the aged one slept sound as the Goddess herself after transcendence such as experienced tonight. Younger and stronger, the student could solace himself thrice more before daylight came.

If only all visitors to their remote world, he thought, guiltily lowering the volume as the one called Malcolm cried out his pleasurer’s name, could be as obliging in their mating habits as these Humans of Enterprise!


End file.
